RIDGEWOOD REC WINTER SESSION – RETURNING FAVORITES AND NEW PROGRAMS AT THE STABLE
Registration is underway for Winter Session with Ridgewood Parks and Recreation at the Stable, 259 N. Maple Avenue.
Several classes return with fun new projects while a few new enrichment classes are added.
Preschool offerings include Garden Arts for Kids, Mini Doodler and My First Art.
Elementary enrichment programs include Drawing and/or Acrylics with Mrs. C, 3D Sculpture with Abrakadoodle, “Let’s Go Green” with Explore Science Inc., Creative Cooking with Education Explorers and Tech Titans with Education Explorers.
Adult classes include Watercolors and Acrylics. (Information/details for adult and senior programs at the Community Center to follow).
Visit the Recreation Homepage at www.ridgewoodnj.net/recreation where you will find all program details and registration forms which may be
downloaded. You will also be able to link to Community Pass for online registration.
Please call the Stable Recreation Office at 201-670-5560 with any questions or if special accommodations are needed. New program suggestions are always welcome.
Please be sure to bookmark the Recreation homepage on your computer for easy access to updated program and special event information.
Request for proposals will be received by the Village of Ridgewood’s Department of Parks and Recreation, up to 3:00 p.m. prevailing time on Wednesday, January 28, 2015, at The Stable, 259 North Maple Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, for the following:
GARDEN MAINTENANCE – PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT
Proposal instructions may be obtained from the Department of Parks and Recreation, 259 North Maple Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. through 4:30 p.m., telephone 201-670-5560, by
Email request to [email protected]. Prospective professional responders requesting proposal documents be mailed to them shall be responsible for providing their own postage/delivery service remuneration.
Prices quoted must be net and exclusive of all Federal, State and Local Sales and Excise Taxes. Proposals may be submitted prior to the due date in person or by mail, addressed to the Department of Parks and Recreation. The Village assumes no responsibility for loss or non-delivery of any proposal sent to it prior to the proposal opening.
Each proposal must be enclosed in a sealed envelope with the name of the responder thereon and endorsed, “Garden Maintenance – Parks and Recreation Department”.
All professional service responders are required to comply with the requirements of N.J.S.A. 52:32-44 (Business Registration of Public Contractors), N.J.S.A. 10:5-31 et seq. and N.J.A.C. 17:27 et seq. (Contract Compliance and Equal Employment Opportunities in Public Contracts).
The Village of Ridgewood reserves the right to reject any or all proposals, to waive any informalities or to accept a proposal which, in its judgment best serves the interest of the Village. No proposal may be withdrawn for a period of sixty-days (60) after the date and time set for the opening of bids.
“Professional Responders are required to comply with the requirements of P.L.1975, C. 127. (NJAC 17:27) regarding Affirmative Action, and Executive Order No. 11246 regarding equal employment opportunity, as amended”.
People are fleeing N.J. faster than any other state, moving company says
By Jeff Goldman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on January 05, 2015 at 1:30 PM, updated January 05, 2015 at 4:56 PM
Nearly two of every three families making an interstate move involving New Jersey last year were leaving the Garden State, the highest rate in the country.
New Jersey had the greatest percentage of outbound moves of any state nationally last year with almost 65 percent departing, according to a company which bills itself as the largest transporter of household goods in the country.
The Garden State has led the nation in outward migration for the fourth time in five years.
In all, United said it tracked 4,003 moves out of New Jersey in 2014 compared to 2,169 inbound.
Nearly half of those leaving New Jersey were bound for Florida (15 percent), California (14), Texas (9) and North Carolina (7.5), spokeswoman Melissa Sullivan told NJ Advance Media.
Retirement and jobs were the top reasons to leave the state last year, according to a United Survey of departing New Jerseyans.
About 42 percent reported leaving for a new job or company transfer. Forty-one percent attributed their move to retirement. More than half (56 percent) of people leaving New Jersey were over the age of 55, with 22 percent older than 65.
Religious Freedom Meeting Tuesday Jan 6 Knights of Columbus Oakland
Happy New Year to all. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have a Happy New Year this Thursday.
The K of C Hall has been reserved so we can have our monthly Religious freedom meeting this Tuesday night, January 6, at 7:30. While the country has been immersed in the Christmas season, a lot of things have been happening regarding religious freedom. Among them are the following:
1. Unreasonable restrictions placed on Christian chaplains at the VA.
2. Unjust punishment meted out to an Army Lieutenant Colonel for running afoul of the Administration’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.
3. Foreign students legally admitted to the US to attend a religious training school now told they may be deported.
4. An Army Chaplain punished for mentioning his faith in a lecture to troops on handling depression.
5. A Catholic University (Marquette university) suspended a professor for defending a student’s right to state the Church’s position on homosexuality.
6. A recent GAO report that Obamacare is subsidizing abortions, contrary to Obama’s promise made to the contrary.
7. Information that Muslims are exempted from Obamacare because insurance violates Muslim doctrine.
8 Movie Faith Freedom Foundation (Christian/Muslim Issues)
While everyone has been absorbed in the holidays, militant secularism never takes a break. These and other things will be discussed at our meeting. If you know of any other incidents or examples come share them with us.
Well, I hope to see everyone on Tuesday night.
Have a happy and safe New Year
Joe Kuhns
Knights of Columbus Oakland
7 Court House Place, Oakland, NJ 07436
(201) 337-7539
What True Health Care Reform Would Look Like
January 5, 2015Matt Battaglioli
With the relatively recent passing of America’s new healthcare law; the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the topics of healthcare, health insurance, prices and reform have been particularly hot lately. This of course does not mean that the controversies surrounding the American healthcare system are anything new. Healthcare prices are getting higher with many hospital visits for certain conditions totaling bills of millions of dollars. Also, the laws regulating the industry are getting heavier by the day. People have known for a while that a solid reform of the system has been in order, though it is unfortunate that most of these people calling for reform have a tendency to find their influence for such reform across the ocean.
What is “Fairness” in Health Care?
Many Americans are so fed up with the American healthcare system, that what seems too many to be the most sensible thing to do is to follow the European model and nationalize the entire industry. With a quick glance at some snapshot statistics, it doesn’t seem to be a crazy idea. After all, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), the United States ranks only no. 37 in quality of healthcare worldwide. Look a little closer though, and one will find that this data does not tell the whole, unbiased story. It turns out that the WHO uses “fairness” as one of its criteria for evaluating nation’s healthcare systems. In fact, a number of the criteria used by the WHO are not that relevant to healthcare itself, such as how much patients pay out of pocket for healthcare. Factoring all criteria together, the US ranks no. 37, however even the WHO ranked the US as no. 1 worldwide in “responsiveness to patients’ needs in choice of provider, dignity, autonomy, timely care, and confidentiality.”
Dr. Timothy Terrell, associate professor of economics at Wofford College, gives some insight into why the US tends to do so much better than other nations in those particular categories. He says:
If you tell people … that medical care is going to be zero cost out of pocket, then at a zero price, the quantity of demand is going to be [all the way to the right] (of a supply and demand graph). You can’t provide that much medical care. … You could have everybody in the country working in the medical care field and you wouldn’t be able to provide as much as people will want if the price is truly zero. So what the government will then do is start to ration medical care according to some criteria of its own.
Arbitrary Criteria for Distribution
Of course, this criteria would have to be arbitrary. Political authorities have no profit or loss; no cost-benefit analysis to aid them in resource allocation as would be the case in a free-market healthcare system. Certainly, evidence of this is prevalent. To give an anecdotal example, a 2007 study found that as many as 6 percent of English patients have treated themselves for dental care due to not being able to find a NHS (National Health Service) dentist. Also, a poll of patients that had sought private dentistry in England revealed that 78 percent had done so because their dentist refused to take NHS patients or an inability to find an NHS clinic.
How To Get More, High-Quality Care
What Americans actually need to do to reduce costs and even improve the quality of their healthcare system is very counterintuitive. It would involve dismantling their Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as eliminating occupational licensing requirements for the medical field. It is true that the prices of US healthcare really took off after the enactment of the programs in 1965, and it is not difficult to see why that is. When the price of a commodity like healthcare becomes too high, healthcare providers actually lose money due to there being so few people who can afford their service. They then have an incentive to lower prices to a more consumer-friendly rate. However, Medicare and Medicaid eliminate that feature of the market as it pertains to healthcare because they make it so that people will have money for healthcare regardless of the price, via subsidy. Providers realize this and then raise their prices knowing they’ll be able to get whatever price they charge.
Economist Milton Friedman pointed this out in an analysis of the post-WWII and post-Medicare/Medicaid American healthcare system in 1991. He wrote:
From 1946 to 1989, the number of [hospital] beds per 1,000 population fell by more than one-half; the occupancy rate, by one-eighth. In sharp contrast, input skyrocketed. Hospital personnel per occupied bed multiplied nearly seven-fold and cost per patient day, adjusted for inflation, an astounding 26-fold. One major engine of these changes was the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. A mild rise in input was turned into a meteoric rise; a mild fall in output, into a rapid decline.
Stop Limiting Supply
Competition in the medical field is one thing that could curtail this effect, though that is drastically hampered by strict occupational licensure requirements. These requirements alone almost exclusively enable the seemingly monopolistic power of the American Medical Association (AMA). It is projected that about one-third of doctors will leave the medical profession within the next decade, much to do with certain new regulations of the industry. What’s more, when in 2010 it was recommended that nurses be able to practice “to the full extent of their education and training” regardless of their specific legal licensing, the AMA (arguably the group most benefiting from these requirements) quickly opposed the notion. Allowing easier entry into the medical field would cause a rise in the supply of labor in that field, and naturally increase competition between medical practitioners and ultimately yield lower prices for the consumers, as well as a better service.
Policies such as opposing the AMA are certainly not politically profitable, but then again, how often is good economics also good politics? Not very. Americans have shown time and time again that they desire a more affordable, more efficient healthcare system; they can have it.
Eliminating subsidies and licensing requirements would go a long way toward reducing costs. Reducing the bureaucratic nature of the healthcare system in general would undoubtedly provide America with more physicians and a more efficient system overall. The most commonly stated reform though; the European model, is nothing more than all of the problems the US already has, doubled down and taken to a whole new extreme; minus most everything that is actually good about it. Hopefully, since the passing of the ACA, Americans will be able to see more clearly the negative effects of government intervention in the healthcare market. Although if not, it can and will only get worse from here.
This much is true: Both President Obama and top Republicans are saying the right things about tax reform right now.
Whether that means that the two sides will make the progress in 2015 necessary to overhaul the tax code before Obama leaves office is another question entirely.
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At his year-end news conference, Obama insisted that he would put out more specific tax reform proposals in the coming months, answering GOP critics who’ve said the White House hasn’t put in the necessary work on rewriting the code.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has said that tax reform is on the short list of issues – also including trade and infrastructure improvements – with the best chance for bipartisan cooperation once Republicans take full control on Capitol Hill in January.
And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will be the House’s top tax writer next year, has said he’s willing to compromise on one of the GOP’s top priorities for reform – that the individual and corporate systems be revamped together.
Ex-Ridgewood police chief to lead regional dispatch center
JANUARY 4, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 4, 2015, 1:21 AM
THE RECORD
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Ridgewood’s Northwest Bergen Central Dispatch has a new director — the village’s former police chief, Lou Mader.
Mader’s appointment was announced by Ridgewood officials on Thursday.
Mader will replace Jack Tancos, who tendered his resignation in late October.
Tancos remains at Bergen Central Dispatch, working as a public safety dispatcher.
Mader, who holds a degree in public administration from William Paterson University, was most recently director of public safety for Hunter College, a position he held for nearly 14 years.
Prior to that, Mader spent eight years running Ridgewood’s police force. He begins his new job Jan. 20.
Republicans are putting the Keystone XL pipeline at the top of the agenda as they seek to move a stack of legislation to President Obama’s desk in 2015.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promised that a vote on approving the $8 billion oil sands project would be his first order of business in the majority, and legislation is set to move quickly in the opening days of the new Congress.
A Senate panel will hold a hearing on legislation to approve construction of the pipeline next week, followed by a markup on Thursday, raising the potential for a final vote in mid-January.
If all goes as planned, Keystone proponents will have the filibuster-proof majority needed to get a bill to Obama, setting the stage for what could be his first veto in the new Republican Congress. But securing a veto-proof majority will be challenging in both the House and the Senate.
“The Senate needs to get back to work, and Leader McConnell chose Keystone, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, as the first for consideration because a final decision on this pipeline project is grossly overdue,” said McConnell spokesman Michael Brumas.
The Threat to Political Speech Online: Q&A With Former Elections Chief Lee Goodman
Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97 / January 03, 2015
The Federal Election Commission has steered clear of regulating political speech on the Internet. But the FEC’s outgoing chairman, Lee Goodman, warns that the commission could well impose rules on Americans who disseminate information on blogs, video channels or podcasts.
Goodman, a Republican, last year headed the six-member FEC, which oversees campaign finance laws. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal before his term ended, he discussed a 3-3 decision by the six-member commission in response to a complaint filed against a nonprofit group called Checks and Balances for Economic Growth.
The nonprofit had posted two campaign videos on YouTube without making disclaimers or divulging production costs. The complaint alleged that Checks and Balances violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 because it didn’t disclose the information.
Goodman and the two other Republicans on the panel contended that free postings on the Internet are exempt from the law. However, FEC Vice Chairman Ann Ravel, a Democrat, called for a “re-examination of the commission’s approach to the Internet.” Such a review, Ravel said, is “long overdue.”
Ravel has not made definitive proposals for new Internet regulations, a spokesman told The Daily Signal, but she plans to meet with technology and media leaders this year.
This transcript of the interview with Goodman was edited for style, clarity and length.
The Daily Signal: What was the basis for your ruling that Checks and Balances for Economic Growth did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act?
Goodman: In 2004 and 2005, the FEC undertook a rulemaking specifically addressing Internet communications and Internet political activity. The commission heard public comments from over 800 citizens and organizations. The commission drew a fairly bright line in its regulations as a result of that process. And under the 2006 rule, the commission will regulate paid advertising on the Internet.
If my organization wants to take out a banner ad or place an Internet video on a commercial website and pay a fee for that advertising space, the FEC regulates that expenditure just like it would a TV ad or radio ad. However, if an organization places content for free on the Internet, there is no expenditure to regulate because the dissemination cost is free.
In the process of drawing that line in the rulemaking process, certain organizations proposed that the FEC count production costs of websites and podcasts and YouTube videos as an expenditure, and the commission declined to adopt that proposal.
Since 2006, if your dissemination on the Internet is free or low-cost, such as posting a free video on YouTube or building a website or organizing a social media platform, or any number of Internet-based political activities, you are unregulated.
The American public has embraced this freedom, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos, blogs, websites, podcasts, social media posts, social media platforms and other Internet-based activities that have gone unregulated without so much as an inquiry from the FEC.
I don’t think there is any evidence that this robust exercise of freedom on the Internet has corrupted any politician in America. Moreover, it’s clear that the Internet has facilitated a free marketplace of ideas and political expression, where individuals and small groups compete with large, well-funded voices on a level playing field.
For all these reasons, my two Republican colleagues and I voted the way we did in the Checks and Balances matter, and will oppose efforts to impose far greater regulation of political speech on the Internet.
Republicans on the FEC ‘will oppose efforts to impose far greater regulation of political speech on the Internet,’ Goodman says. (Photo: Newscom)
The Daily Signal: If this discussion is brought before the FEC as Vice Chairman Ann Ravel said, what implications could this have on the blogging community, on any Web-based news organization, on people with YouTube channels or organizations posting YouTube videos?
Goodman: I don’t think we can begin to contemplate all of the severe consequences to online political speech as a result of even opening this discussion within the FEC.
First, I believe that opening this issue will serve only to deter low-cost and free discussion of political issues on the Internet. As people begin to hear that the Federal Election Commission is considering a crackdown on Internet political speech, some people will be discouraged from participating. I think that’s a shame, and that’s one reason I’m speaking out loudly and clearly that three Republican commissioners will oppose any effort to restrict freedom on the Internet.
“Republican commissioners will oppose any effort to restrict freedom on the Internet,” says 2014 FEC Chairman Lee Goodman of online political speech
Second, I cannot imagine how the Federal Election Commission will begin to regulate hundreds of thousands of blogs, YouTube videos, chat rooms, emails and links, and all sorts of Internet-based political discussion because of how vast political discussion on the Internet currently is.
The problem for the FEC as a practical matter — put aside the philosophical and policy implications — what the vice chair is inviting the FEC to do is to establish an Internet review board where a room full of government bureaucrats sit on a daily basis and troll the Internet for political commentary — to identify online commentators who did not register or report their expenses in connection with their website, and to issue subpoenas seeking information about their expenditures.
I know of no other way that the FEC could regulate the hundreds of thousands of posts on the Internet, absent such a review process.
The Daily Signal: It seems like this would hurt the little guys starting blogs, as opposed to big companies and news organizations. Is that the case?
Goodman: The specter of regulation of Internet political speech will discourage small groups and individuals from using the Internet to express their political opinions. If we regulate it, we will necessarily discourage it and get less of it. It’s an axiom that if you regulate it, you will deter it and get less of it.
Under current law, there are two important exemptions from FEC regulation: One is the media exemption. Congress wrote in the Federal Election Campaign Act an explicit exemption for the media, the press.
The second important exemption, created in the commission’s 2006 rulemaking, is the Internet exemption. If the commission were to abolish the Internet exemption, many online bloggers who have been protected by it would resort to protection under the media exemption.
However, the distinction between a bona fide media organization and blogger online is a blurred line. And there are three Democratic commissioners on the FEC today who have consistently voted to constrict the definition of the press entitled to the media exemption.
It is unclear whether online bloggers would be exempt from regulation under the press exemption, and it would embroil the FEC in determining which bloggers are the press and which bloggers are not the press. That would be a significant consequence and complication if the FEC were to follow Vice Chair Ravel’s proposal.
The Daily Signal: Would this, then, be regulated by the government combing blogs to see if the blogs meet the qualifications for what the FEC rules as a media organization?
Goodman: That’s correct. Look at the medium. This is not as easy as identifying who has a broadcast license from the Federal Communications Commission. The Internet has placed a printing press in the hands of every citizen in America. And many small groups and individuals have started political commentary pages or websites on their kitchen tables and have grown those blogs into being significant daily publications.
The Internet has democratized not just political speech generally, but journalism specifically. Imagine the FEC having to comb all blogs in America to determine which ones are exempt, are bona fide press entities, [and] which ones are not bona fide press entities and would be regulated because the Internet exemption has been abolished. I believe this is an area where the government ought to leave well enough alone.
On Nov. 5, national and local newspapers in New York report on the results of the previous day’s mid-term elections. (Photo: Richard B. Levine/Newscom)
The Daily Signal: Isn’t it the First Amendment right of Americans to record podcasts and write on the Internet?
Goodman: Absolutely, and let me take it a step further. This is the fundamental error in the proposal to regulate the Internet. The Supreme Court consistently has ruled that the FEC has no constitutional authority to regulate speech for the sake of regulating speech.
The FEC exists solely to regulate large contributions to candidates and to require public disclosure of large expenditures to influence elections because the money involved in the contributions and the expenditures has the potential to corrupt politicians.
The vast majority of posts on the Internet, from YouTube videos to websites to blogs, are low cost or free. Therefore, if we were to begin regulating online political speech, the FEC would be in the position of regulating speech and not expenditures for speech.
Absolutely it’s a First Amendment right to speak to the world through your personal computer without governmental interference, so long as you’re not corrupting politicians.
The Daily Signal: Is the concern that someone who is running for Congress is going to find a blog and be corrupted?
Goodman: I cannot speak for the vice chairman. I infer from her statement that my Democratic colleagues are concerned that Internet speech has become highly effective and influential in the political process.
Pew issued a report one year ago indicating that one-half of Americans report the Internet as a primary source of obtaining political news, information and advocacy. So the Internet clearly is an influential medium in America today.
I believe that’s what captured the attention and regulatory impulses of Vice Chairman Ravel. Just because it is influential or effective does not give the FEC a writ to regulate it.
“Just because it is influential or effective does not give the FEC a writ to regulate it,” says 2014 FEC Chairman Lee Goodman of online political speech
The Daily Signal: It seems this is a nonpartisan issue. You have Democrats and Republicans who would benefit from an unregulated Internet.
Goodman: The proposal to regulate Internet political speech would have ecumenical consequences. It would deter political speech on the right and the left of the political spectrum. More importantly, it would deter thousands of populist voices that have found a voice on the Internet.
The Daily Signal: Do you think this move has anything to do with the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC, even though those decisions deal with monetary contributions?
Goodman: I haven’t heard anyone articulate that being the problem. But the major concern after Citizens United was that large, corporate-funded voices would drown out all other voices in the political process. On the Internet, the smallest of bloggers has the level playing field to make their ideas heard as easily as the largest of corporations.
The decentralized architecture of the Internet gives each citizen an equal place to have his voice heard. What goes viral on the Internet is interesting political speech that resonates with people. Much of what goes viral — by “going viral” I mean gets millions of viewers — is creative and interesting content, and not necessarily well-funded content.
Look at “Obama Girl” in 2008. I daresay that video has had, on YouTube alone, 30 million hits. And because it goes viral and other people pick it up and send links to it, who knows how many Americans have seen that video. JibJab.com [animation with political themes] went viral. I don’t think the production cost of JibJab cartoons is very expensive.
What large corporations tend to do and what well-funded advocacy groups tend to do is they buy advertising. They buy banner ads, for example, and we regulate those expenditures. If you pay Yahoo or AOL to post a banner ad [for] your advocacy message, we regulate that. But what’s going viral and being seen by millions of Americans on the Internet is predominantly low-cost production.
What’s viral on the Internet is a populist phenomenon. Someone posts something interesting or something that resonates, and then millions of Americans talk to each other through email and links and say, ‘Look at this.’ I believe that the Internet is the antidote to the concerns raised after Citizens United. We don’t need to ruin it for the American people.
The Daily Signal: Those are interesting examples. How would FEC regulation change that process?
Goodman: BarelyPolitical.com produced “Obama Girl” and other videos — all politically themed – about John McCain, about Rudy Giuliani. There were at least a dozen politically themed videos that they produced and posted for free on YouTube. It was the first one that went viral. They had millions of viewers for all of them.
Under a regulatory regime, there would be several implications. First, each video would have to carry a disclaimer at the bottom indicating who paid for it and whether it was authorized by a political candidate. Second, BarelyPolitical.com would have to file expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission disclosing the first date on which they post each YouTube video and how much they spent on the production.
Screen shot from an “Obama Girl” video. (Photo: BarelyPolitical.com/YouTube)
The FEC would have to issue regulations on what would be included in the production costs – do I consider purchasing costs of your personal computer, the editing equipment that you used? What about the video cameras you use? Did you pay the girl who performed in the video? Did you pay anyone else?
We would have to have a regulation prescribing what is described in production costs. The software that you purchased — and by the way, that goes for individual bloggers, too — up to computer, the software you purchased, your monthly Internet access charge. The FEC would have to get into this granular level of prescriptive regulation to tell people what to include in their expenditure reports to the FEC.
Then the content creator would have to disclose anyone who contributed money for the purpose of supporting the blog or YouTube post. And then, last but not least, if they coordinated their communication at all with a campaign or political party — for example, if they republish any campaign materials from a candidate — then that would count as a contribution to the candidate if the blogger or YouTube poster is incorporated. And that would mean the expenditure being reported is an illegal corporate contribution.
These are the consequences of regulating what has been a wholly constructive forum for Americans to speak and share ideas. Government needs to know when to leave well enough alone. The specter of government regulation of hundreds of thousands of websites and YouTube posts and chat rooms is ominous. It’s the regulatory Pandora’s box.
Americans on the move want warmth, affordability: reports
By Mark Guarino
CHICAGO Fri Jan 2, 2015 2:03pm EST
(Reuters) – Americans moving out of state in 2014 were most likely to head to places that were warmer and more affordable, such as the South and Southwest, according to studies by two major moving companies.
The 47th annual report by Allied Van Lines showed that Illinois topped the list of states people are moving away from with 1,372 net moves, followed by Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan and New Jersey. The states have remained in the top five since 2010, the company said.
In its 38th annual report, released Friday, United Van Lines reports that New Jersey, New York, Illinois, North Dakota and West Virginia represented the states their clients exited the most last year. Illinois, where outbound moves represented 63 percent of total moves for the state, has ranked among the top five for the past six years, the company says.
Michael Stoll, an economist with the department of public policy at the University of California in Los Angeles, said in a statement for United that migration patterns reflected long-term movement to the South and Southwest, where housing costs are lower, climates are less severe and job growth has been at or above the national average.
United said Oregon was the most preferred destination for its clients, followed by South Carolina, North Carolina, Vermont and Florida. The company said 38 percent of its clients moving to Oregon were going for a new job while 29 percent cited retirement.
Allied clients were most likely to move to Texas, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina and Colorado, the company said. The company said the most popular destinations were generally the same but the number of moves has increased with California, Oregon and Washington state showing the greatest increases for inbound moves.
“Trends demonstrate a heavy movement toward warm-weather, retirement-friendly states,” Lesli Bertoli, general manager and vice president of Allied, said in a statement.
Request for proposals will be received by the Village of Ridgewood’s Department of Parks and Recreation, up to 4:00 p.m. prevailing time on Wednesday, January 28, 2015, at The Stable, 259 North Maple Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, for the following:
CONCESSION REFRESHMENT SERVICES – 2015 THE WATER’S EDGE CAFÉ, GRAYDON POOL
Proposal instructions may be obtained from the Department of Parks and Recreation, 259 North Maple Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. through 4:30 p.m., telephone 201-670-5560, by
Email request to [email protected]. Prospective professional responders requesting proposal documents be mailed to them shall be responsible for providing their own postage/delivery service remuneration.
Prices quoted must be net and exclusive of all Federal, State and Local Sales and Excise Taxes. Proposals may be submitted prior to the due date in person or by mail, addressed to the Department of Parks and Recreation. The Village assumes no responsibility for loss or non-delivery of any proposal sent to it prior to the proposal opening.
Each proposal must be enclosed in a sealed envelope with the name of the responder thereon and endorsed, “Concession Refreshment Services 2015 – The Water’s Edge Café, Graydon Pool”.
All professional service responders are required to comply with the requirements of N.J.S.A. 52:32-44 (Business Registration of Public Contractors), N.J.S.A. 10:5-31 et seq. and N.J.A.C. 17:27 et seq. (Contract Compliance and Equal Employment Opportunities in Public Contracts).
The Village of Ridgewood reserves the right to reject any or all proposals, to waive any informalities or to accept a proposal which, in its judgment best serves the interest of the Village. No proposal may be withdrawn for a period of sixty-days (60) after the date and time set for the opening of bids.
“Professional Responders are required to comply with the requirements of P.L.1975, C. 127. (NJAC 17:27) regarding Affirmative Action, and Executive Order No. 11246 regarding equal employment opportunity, as amended”.
Ridgewood parking changes aimed at opening up more spots
DECEMBER 26, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2014, 12:31 AM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Ridgewood’s not taking its New Year’s parking resolutions lightly.
Come Jan. 1, new changes are officially going into effect.
Every 12-hour meter in the downtown lots, with the exception of the train station lot, will be recalibrated to a three-hour time limit from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The new rate for the lots will be 50 cents an hour, not 25 cents. Also, repeat parking in the same space will be even more strictly enforced than it is now (meaning, more tickets).
The goal?
To open up parking spaces for shoppers.
A special half-hour public meeting was held on Monday night to enact the final changes.
According to Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld, the official recalibration of the meters will be done around Jan. 2 and 3.
After this point, she said, all meters in downtown Ridgewood will be three-hour meters, with two exceptions: 15-minute meters and meters in the train station’s Station Plaza lot, which will remain 12-hour meters.
Budget war looms for Obama, GOP
February 2: Obama’s budget deadline
The president is required under the law to submit his budget proposal to Congress by the first Monday of February, which in 2015 falls on the second day of the month.
Obama has repeatedly missed the deadline during his presidency. Last year’s budget came a month late, in March, while the previous year’s was unveiled two months late in early April.
The president’s budget proposal for fiscal 2016, which begins in October, is likely to include more spending for the Pentagon than originally expected because of the new battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Obama administration officials have hinted that the proposed spending level for defense will bust the cap set by the Budget Control Act of 2011. If Congress doesn’t raise or remove the cap before next October, across-the-board spending cuts could take effect.
February 27: DHS funding runs out
GOP leaders will have two months to decide how to handle funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the rest of the fiscal year. The $1.1 trillion spending bill Congress passed at the end of the lame-duck session only extended DHS funding through February and did not allow for any spending increases.
Republican leaders chose the short-term solution to satisfy conservatives who demanded action to defund Obama’s immigration actions.
Their campaign to block funding might ultimately fail. A Congressional Research Service report from the October 2013 government shutdown found that even if the government closes, immigration-related services would continue to operate.
Democrats have argued that maintaining an outdated funding level for DHS prevents the administration from implementing new programs on cybersecurity and counterterrorism
During World War I the trenches of the Western Front ran right through the vineyards of Champagne, the historic French winemaking region 90 miles north of Paris. Between 1914 and 1918, heavy shelling uprooted row upon row of chardonnay and pinot noir vines, pruned short per the instructions of a 17th-century Benedictine monk named Dom Pérignon. Many of the region’s residents were driven underground by the fighting, hiding out in the limestone caves usually used for the storage and manufacture of the region’s signature sparkling wine. By the time the armistice was signed in 1918, a huge portion of Champagne’s vineyards had been destroyed.
All told, the devastation of the war amounted to only a minor setback in the improbable rise of Champagne’s signature product, the bubbly beverage synonymous with traditional celebrations, modern luxury and conspicuous consumption. Champagne the place had seen battles before (Attila the Hun, the Hundred Years’ War, the Franco-Prussian conflict) and would again (World War II) but from the mid-19th century through the present day, the biggest battles over Champagne the drink involved not soldiers, but lawyers, treaties, trademark officials and scores of angry French citizens. All this for a local drink whose signature feature—its fizz—is the very thing old Dom Pérignon spent much of his life trying to eliminate.
When wine has bubbles, it’s a sign that it has continued to ferment inside the bottle. For much of the history of viniculture, this was a no-no, a mark of wine gone bad, associated with murky, unstable and unpredictable vintages. Although a few vineyards had produced intentionally sparkling wine (as early as the 15th century in Limoux in the South of France), it was only in the late 1600s that bubbly from Champagne began to be produced and respected. Wines from Champagne had a tendancy to fizz because early frosts often led to incomplete fermentation during the manufacturing process. When things warmed the following spring, some of the wine would begin to sparkle. Fizzy Champagne, in fact, was popular among the well-to-do in Georgian England before it became so in the courts and chateaus of pre-Revolutionary France. Barrels of the stuff were shipped across the channel and bottled there. In the early 1600s, English coal-fired glassworks produced bottles far stronger than anything wood furnaces could manage. By 1740 molding techniques had arrived, which allowed for the production of identical bottles and standardized corks. Suddenly the fizz could be contained.
In 1815, another key innovation arrived from a Champagne producer known as the Widow Cliquot. Champagne’s in-bottle fermentation clouds the wine with dead yeast (early Champagne glasses were made mottled to help hide this effect). Getting rid of the yeast during manufacturing took an expert hand and spilled a lot of precious bubbly. Cliquot’s innovation was to turn the bottles neck-down and let the yeast settle in the neck in a process known as “remuage” or riddling. Once the murk was isolated, the bottleneck could be submerged in icy brine, freezing the bad bits into a floating plug of wine-debris that could then be removed before the remaining clear bubbly was sweetened and re-corked.
By John H. Cochrane
This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 21, 2014.
This year the tide changed in the economy. Growth seems finally to be returning. The tide also changed in economic ideas. The brief resurgence of traditional Keynesian ideas is washing away from the world of economic policy.
No government is remotely likely to spend trillions of dollars or euros in the name of “stimulus,” financed by blowout borrowing. The euro is intact: Even the Greeks and Italians, after six years of advice that their problems can be solved with one more devaluation and inflation, are sticking with the euro and addressing — however slowly — structural “supply” problems instead.
U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne wrote in these pages Dec. 14 that Keynesians wanting more spending and more borrowing “were wrong in the recovery, and they are wrong now.” The land of John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith is going with Smith.
Why? In part, because even in economics, you can’t be wrong too many times in a row.
Keynesians told us that once interest rates got stuck at or near zero, economies would fall into a deflationary spiral. Deflation would lower demand, causing more deflation, and so on.
“We were warned that the 2013 sequester meant a recession. Instead, unemployment came down faster than expected.”
It never happened. Zero interest rates and low inflation turn out to be quite a stable state, even in Japan. Yes, Japan is growing more slowly than one might wish, but with 3.5% unemployment and no deflationary spiral, it’s hard to blame slow growth on lack of “demand.”
Our first big stimulus fell flat, leaving Keynesians to argue that the recession would have been worse otherwise. George Washington’s doctors probably argued that if they hadn’t bled him, he would have died faster.
With the 2013 sequester, Keynesians warned that reduced spending and the end of 99-week unemployment benefits would drive the economy back to recession. Instead, unemployment came down faster than expected, and growth returned, albeit modestly. The story is similar in the U.K.
These are only the latest failures. Keynesians forecast depression with the end of World War II spending. The U.S. got a boom. The Phillips curve failed to understand inflation in the 1970s and its quick end in the 1980s, and disappeared in our recession as unemployment soared with steady inflation.
Still, facts and experience are seldom decisive in economics. Maybe Washington’s doctors are right. There are always confounding influences. Logic matters too. And illogic hurts. Keynesian ideas are also ebbing from policy as sensible people understand how much topsy-turvy magical thinking they require.
Hurricanes are good, rising oil prices are good, and ATMs are bad, we were advised: Destroying capital, lower productivity and costly oil will raise inflation and occasion government spending, which will stimulate output. Though Japan’s tsunami and oil shock gave it neither inflation nor stimulus, worriers are warning that the current oil price decline, a boon in the past, will kick off the dreaded deflationary spiral this time.
I suspect policy makers heard this, and said to themselves “That’s how you think the world works? Really?” And stopped listening to such policy advice.
Keynesians tell us not to worry about huge debts, or to default or inflate them away (but please, call it “restructuring” or “repairing balance sheets”). Even the Obama administration has ignored that advice, promising long-run solutions to the debt problem from day one. Europeans have centuries of memories of what happens to governments that don’t pay debts, or who need to borrow for a new emergency but have stiffed their creditors once too often. More debt? Nein danke!
In Keynesian models, government spending stimulates even if totally wasted. Pay people to dig ditches and fill them up again. By Keynesian logic, fraud is good; thieves have notoriously high marginal propensities to consume. That’s a hard sell, so stimulus is routinely dressed in “infrastructure” clothes. Clever. How can anyone who hit a pothole complain about infrastructure spending?
But people feel they’ve been had when they discover that the economics is about wasted spending, and infrastructure was a veneer to get the bill passed. And they smell a rat when they hear economic arguments shaded for partisan politics.
Stimulus advocates: Can you bring yourselves to say that the Keystone XL pipeline, LNG export terminals, nuclear power plants and dams are infrastructure? Can you bring yourselves to mention that the Environmental Protection Agency makes it nearly impossible to build anything in the U.S.? How can you assure us that infrastructure does not mean “crony boondoggle,” or high-speed trains to nowhere?
Now you like roads and bridges. Where were you during decades of opposition to every new road on grounds that they only encouraged suburban “sprawl”? If you repeat in your textbooks how defense spending saved the economy in World War II, why do you support defense cutbacks today? Why is “infrastructure” spending abstract or anecdotal, not a plan for actual, valuable, concrete projects that someone might object to?
Keynesians tell us that “sticky wages” are the big underlying economic problem. But why do they just repeat this story to justify inflation and stimulus? Why do they not advocate policies to undo minimum wages, labor laws, occupational licenses and other regulations that make wages stickier?
Inequality was fashionable this year. But no government in the foreseeable future is going to enact punitive wealth taxes. Europe’s first stab at “austerity” tried big taxes on the wealthy, meaning on those likely to invest, start businesses or hire people. Burned once, Europe is moving in the opposite direction. Magical thinking — that, contrary to centuries of experience, massive taxation and government control of incomes will lead to growth, prosperity and social peace — is moving back to the salons.
Yes, there is plenty wrong and plenty to worry about. Growth is too slow, and not enough people are working. Even supporters acknowledge that Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare are a mess. Too many people on the bottom are stuck in terrible education, jobless poverty, and a dysfunctional criminal justice system. But the policy world has abandoned the notion that we can solve our problems with blowout borrowing, wasted spending, inflation, default and high taxes. The policy world is facing the tough tradeoffs that centuries of experience have taught us, not wishing them away.
